Howard Fine was born and raised in Los Angeles. He studied writing and
literature at UCLA in the late 1980s. Spent his early professional life
drifting from one inconsequential job to another while trying to
support his writing habit. Enjoyed minor professional success
publishing short stories and poetry.
Fine was also active in the underground world of billboard manipulation
and was featured in the acclaimed Dutch documentary series, "The Spirit
of America", a five part series produced by the Dutch television
network VPRO and directed by Bram van Splunteren. The series profiled the
contemporary American cultural landscape, focusing on themes peculiar
to America in the early 1990s. In addition to being featured in the
episode dealing with tabloid-ism in popular culture, Fine was the L.A.
producer for two of the episodes.
Fine's interest in graphic arts lead to working as an animator on some
groundbreaking music videos and television commercials in the early
1990s. This experience prompted him to focus specifically on developing
multimedia content for CD-Roms and later, the fledgling world wide web.
Ultimately, these opportunities afforded Fine a position directing a 30
second animated interstitial, for Disney's One Saturday Morning (1997), called "Boss of the World".
Also during this time, he began designing on-screen computer playback
graphics and animation for many shows, such as Buffy - Im Bann der Dämonen (1997), Angel: Jäger der Finsternis (1999) and
Chicago Hope: Endstation Hoffnung (1994).
Combining his skills in the new media arts and experience in
production, Fine was hired on the CBS show The District - Einsatz in Washington (2000) by Brenton Fletcher to help
run an experimental (for network television anyway) department which
operated as a kind of in-house visual effects department which oversaw
the engineering of a complex system of video and computer playback for
the show, in addition to creating all types of digital content which
was both used in the show, and contributed to the post production
process.
Fine is a member of the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Union, Local
839.
